A mixture of pieces of writing, some recent, but many older. Some of them are written to be spoken aloud, ranted, recorded or for performance, maybe imagine a voice speaking it, some is just thoughts about things, about teaching performance, some are stories.

Wednesday, 28 June 2017

Plaque

On a bench, near the fountain on the inner
circle of Regent’s Park there was a new brass plaque that said

Oh how the night owl calls

calling calling from its tree!

Lolita Aldave Green

Barcelona - St Albans

I wondered how it came to be ...

I put the photo of the plaque on Facebook and wondered if there would be any response.

A friend replied within minutes matter of factly:

‘I assume it is a bench set there in memory of Lolita Green and sometimes the family/

friends or those remembering the deceased, attach a plaque instead of simple

having the bench carved with the message... (?)

This seemed a bit prosaic, more of a slightly irritated explanation,or a bit of a tease than a

flight of fantasy and I replied ‘Aah yes of course’ but a possible story was forming in my

head felt there was more to the strange words on the plaque, and then, a couple of

minutes later, she said:

I think the night owl is literal but probably refers to Lolita as well - a way to suggest her

voice remains present in the owls or she is reincarnated as an owl (or something ...).

Perhaps she was a 'night owl' (?) or loved nature. It is very interesting actually and rather

more inspiring than the average engraving on a bench.

Then another friend sent this:

‘The line is from Lorca’s poem, Ballad of the Moon’

I googled it and found a translation of the poem

which included the words
‘Oh, how the night owl calls,
calling, calling from its tree!,
I thanked him for letting us know the text on the plaque was a quote from a Lorca poem
And I wrote this possible story (there could be many) born from true fragments:

She was born Lolita Gonzalez, the youngest of 12 children in a noisy

family who lived selling agua in one of the busiest loudest parts of Barcelona.

Sometimes she escaped from her family from the hot crowded sweaty city to the

hills where she would talk to the owls. It was rumoured that sometimes the

gypsies would come dancing through these woods. She was always hoping they

would so she could run away with the gypsies but they never came and so she

never ran away with them. Disappointed that they never appeared, but still

wanting to escape, she took a train down to Sitges on the coast where, on the

beach, absently walking along deep in thought she met an English film director,

Dave (Al) Green who was showing his English Tourist board funded short 'A

Guide to St.Albans' at the Sitges film festival. The film didn’t fit in with the

other festival films and he didn’t fit in with the trendy euro film scene so he took

a stroll on the beach where he met Lolita. Both outsiders, they fell together,

conspiratorially in love. Well they married and she had found her escape. She

moved to England swapping St. Albans for Barcelona, choosing sparrows over